Commentary
U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai met her
G7 counterparts, plus those from India and Australia, on Oct. 28 in
Japan.
The next day, they released oblique criticism of China and Russia, including China’s ban on graphite exports and weaponization of trade against Japanese seafood and Russia’s military interference in Ukraine’s grain exports. The G7 denounced subsidies and forced technology transfer and agreed on the need to derisk strategic good supply chains.
On Oct. 30, the United States announced that it would begin
bulk buying Japanese seafood that Beijing has banned. The seafood is destined for U.S. military chow halls but represents just a fraction of the excess supply.
The G7 could more thoroughly counter the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) trade aggression against Japan by coordinating increased seafood purchases across all its members, including Germany, France, Italy, Canada, and the UK, rather than just relying on the United States to step in. The G7 could add to this by coordinating matching tariffs against China, Russia, and other “
axis of evil” countries, including Iran and North Korea.
Such a “freedom trade” strategy would enjoy an improved political environment for increased China tariffs that facilitate “friendshoring.”
President Joe Biden left former President Donald Trump’s China tariffs largely in place, for example, and Treasury Secretary
Janet Yellen coined the term “friendshoring” in 2022.
President Trump is considering an across-the-board 10 percent tariff on all goods imported by the United States if he were to be reelected as president. Even higher tariffs could be imposed on countries with which the United States suffers from high trade deficits to incentivize them to buy as much from us as we buy from them.
Talk of the United States rolling back unmitigated free trade is typically met with howls of protest from U.S. trade partners and economists. But tariffs would increase U.S. bargaining power as a net importer with not only axis countries such as China, Russia, and Iran but also countries such as India and Vietnam that might be willing to decrease their support and trade with the axis in exchange for lower U.S. tariffs on their goods.
The Washington-based Heritage Foundation has traditionally been supportive of free trade. However, its position on trade with China has evolved.
“Personally, I come from a free trade background, but as Ambassador Lighthizer has taught us, we should not have free trade with foreign adversaries like the People’s Republic of China,” Andrew Hale, a senior analyst on trade and economic policy at The Heritage Foundation, told The Epoch Times.
“Everyone should be aware of the risks of investing in foreign adversaries, particularly those with non-market economies, including China.”
Even The Wall Street Journal, that bastion of support for free trade that takes its anti-tariff creed as a matter of religion, ran an opinion article that explains the
arguments for tariffs. The article, published on Oct. 27, is titled “Why Trump Is Right About Tariffs.”
The day before, the Journal ran an article detailing the
loopholes in current tariff laws against China, including the “de minimis” exemption, which is a fancy way of saying that packages valued at less than $800 pay zero tariffs, while the same goods sent in bulk and sold to Walmart customers would pay the tariff. That’s unfair and benefits direct-to-customer retailers from China such as Shein and Temu. It explains their profits (and the explosion of
weird ads over the past few months).
To keep its exemption, Shein paid lobbyists $600,000 from April to June. UPS and FedEx, which profit by delivering small packages from China, are members of a business advocacy group that took a position in support of the de minimis exemption. They aggressively seek to keep delivery customers from China, even if, in the process, they bury the entire U.S. economy in piles of flimsy cardboard.
The
European Union is also considering increased tariffs against China, especially when it comes to electric vehicles (EV). The European Commission argues that China’s EV industry is subsidized by Beijing, which gives it an unfair trade advantage in Europe that will soon result in a flood of cheap EVs. Those EVs could completely drown European car manufacturers, setting back Europe’s industrial ecosystem by decades.
German billionaire
Mathias Döpfner wants even more systemic trade penalties against the axis, including replacing the World Trade Organization with a “
Freedom Trade Alliance” that’s limited to countries that, among other things, observe human rights and the rule of law. Exclusion from the world’s wealthiest trading systems in the United States, Europe, Japan, and South Korea through higher tariffs would force dictatorships and fence-sitters to improve support for human rights so that they can regain easy access to U.S. and allied markets.
Mr. Döpfner
explained, “We need something where democratic economies unite, define their interests, and in a way collectively achieve a completely different negotiation power, and with that bring China to the table on different terms.”
China was once lauded as the “world’s factory.” But given the CCP’s misuse of Chinese trade power for illiberal purposes, few should want to continue enabling its totalitarianism. With the new U.S. speaker of the House, Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.), finally elected, there’s a
better chance of moving China-related legislation. Now is the time to increase tariffs and sanctions on not only China but also the entire “axis of evil.” The future of democracy and human rights hangs in the balance.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
